Yes, it’s that time of the year and fiesta time for Tacloban City is now here again!

While the big fiesta celebration is on June 29 & 30 yet, fiesta activities start about a month or so before then.

So food stalls, tiangges and nightly entertainment shows have come to life once again at the city’s main fiesta celebration venues – at the Balyuan Compound, Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival Park and at the Astrodome.

We were at the official opening of this year’s Pintados Kasadyaan Festival Park (formerly RTR Plaza) last Friday, June 08.

In what was generally perceived as a tight match between the Buyogan Festival of Leyte and the Dinagyang Festival of Iloilo, with everybody enthralled by the huge props used in their respective performances, the Buyogan Festival – grand champion of Aliwan 2009 and Sinulog 2009 (Free Interpretation category) – fell short of reclaiming the grand championship title of the Aliwan Fiesta Festival 2012 and had to settle for 2nd place with the Dinagyang winning the title 3 times in a row.

Unlike during the Aliwan 2009 where we got drenched in the rain with the parade lasting till 2 o’clock in the morning the next day, we got sunny weather this time and the parade started much earlier at 1:30 in the afternoon at Quirino Grandstand, and ended at 7PM at Aliwan Theater at CCP Complex.

Now on its 10th year, the Aliwan Fiesta Festival is an annual celebration parade held in Metro-Manila featuring the top winners of the various festivals from all over the country vying for the top prizes – a cool PhP1M for the 1st place, PhP.5M for the 2nd place and PhP250,000 for the 3rd place.

The festival parade started at the Quirino Grandstand then proceeded along Roxas Blvd ending at the Aliw Theater at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Complex.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we couldn’t help it but head on to Kalanggaman during the Holy Week summer break.

The family and I have been enchanted by this tiny jewel of an islet.

We love its remoteness, its natural, undeveloped, “uncommercial” state. And although there are a few picnic kiosks, a common cooking facility and public restrooms, there are no ‘theme park’ developments in the islet.

We are not really the type who yearn for a modern mall nor chic restos/bars/cafes by the beach.

It was Holy Week so when we arrived, all the kiosks were already taken despite an earlier reservation we made with the Palompon LGU which manages the place. But not to worry, many were not planning to stay overnight so by mid afternoon, we already had our kiosks and had 4 tents set-up, enough to accommodate us all.

Shortly before we started preparing for breakfast very early in the morning on the second day of our Holy Week sojourn at Kalanggaman Island, we had an unexpected guest who dropped in.

It was the islet’s resident Black-crowned Night-heron, locally known as “lapay” 🙂

It was actually not our first meeting.

I first met the Lapay during one of my earlier trips to Kalanggaman. I was told by the islet caretakers that there was originally one pair of the birds bred in captivity and released in the islet by Palompon’s local government personnel. The other bird vanished and only this one stayed around.

Here are photos I took of her during that first encounter May of last year…

At the old Manila Domestic Terminal while awaiting to board my flight back to Tacloban recently, I was annoyed to hear the public announcement of our 4:30PM flight being delayed by about an hour or so.

Shucks! That meant I won’t be able to do some errands later upon arrival.

In moments like this, one can only do so much as to update others waiting for you about the delay, then you wait and kill time.

Cautiously.

Things could get worse. Like your flight being cancelled.

Boarding time came sooner than the announced one-hour delay, and we were up above the clouds in no time.

It was after I dozed off for a couple of minutes when I awoke and took stock of my bearings that I instinctively peeked out of the plane’s window. And lo and behold: I was met with a spectacular visual feast!